Thyroid hormones induce sumoylation of the cold shock domain-containing protein PIPPin in developing rat brain and in cultured neurons.

We previously identified a cold shock domain (CSD)-containing protein (PIPPin), expressed at high level in brain cells. PIPPin has the potential to undergo different post-translational modifications and might be a good candidate to regulate the synthesis of specific proteins in response to extracellular stimuli. Here we report the effects of thyroid hormone (T3) on PIPPin expression in developing rat brain. We found that a significant difference among euthyroid- and hypothyroid- newborn rats concerns sumoylation of nuclear PIPPin, that is abolished by hypothyroidism. Moreover, T3-dependence of PIPPin sumoylation has been confirmed in cortical neurons purified from brain cortices and culture…